Même quand j'suis en vacances je bosse

Just a few points here, after making the mistake of listening to the Five Live phone-in this morning:

* The next time I hear anyone make arguments referring to the Sheikh incident as Eriksson "publically" criticising his players, I will go completely mad. He did not publically criticise his players. As far as anyone is concerned, it was a private conversation. How many of the people that call phone-in programmes about this would survive more than a week in their current jobs if their mates recorded and distributed what they said about their coworkers or boss over a drink down the pub?

* It's conjecture, but a very decent hypothesis, that Sven was going to leave after this world cup in any case. If so, what has the NOTW achieved with its campaign to discredit him and hound him out? Absolutely nothing, other than causing potential rifts in the England camp. Great work dudes.

* None of the "potential candidates" articles springing up seem to mention Big Phil Scolari. The man has 1. expressed an interest in the job, 2. won the last world cup, 3. reached the last european championship final, and in the process 4. dumped England out of both those competitions. Sam Allardyce and Steve McLaren's mutual most successful moment was playing a Waddington's League Combination final against each other in 2004 - they shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath. If Hiddink can be tempted, then why not; yes, he was lucky in Korea, but imagine what he could do with players the calibre of England's current crop. Two other propositions are the stuff of political nightmare - O'Neill is an Irish Catholic for frig's sake. And whoever first suggested Hitzfeld is a loon. Great manager, but there's one glaring issue. You've seen what the English have done to a "neutral" Swede; what on earth would happen to a German?

* People saying he was a crap England manager because of the defeat to Denmark (meaningless friendly, 4-1), Australia (meaningless friendly, 3-1) or Norn Iron (ultimately insignificant qualifier, 1-0) conveniently forget the wins against Germany (5-1 in their back yard in a vital crunch match), Argentina (1-0 in the World Cup and 3-2 in an anything-but-meaningless friendly) or Poland home+away (which no-one seems to notice is actually a bloody impressive pair of qualifying results). Yes performances were poor against some "weak" opposition (the Wales+Azerbaijan wins come to mind) but when Chelsea play badly and still win, it's a sign of "Champions". Something doesn't figure.

* Nearly every caller this morning criticised Sven's private life and the fact that he likes a bit of action with a number of ladies. Then five seconds later accused him of lacking passion. (It's at moments like that I hate being English.)

* On the same subject: watching from abroad, the British Press' reaction to his private life was frankly surreal. Sven had an "affair"? Big wow, as we used to say in primary school. For feck's sake, how can it be an affair when the guy's not even married? He has a long term girlfriend maybe, but that's his problem. He did absolutely nothing wrong, and it had absolultely nothing to do with his job as England manager. Except that I suspect he wouldn't have pulled Ulrika if he was a window salesman from Chipping Sodbury.

La, well, I'm off to Amsterdam for a few days for a festival disguised as delayed Christmas holidays. Which means no Timberblog until next week. If anyone happens to be around in the Netherlands currently, details are on the poster there, but I'm afraid our show is already sold out.